Human - Wildlife conflict and forest fragmentation linkages in Northern Western ghats

Western Ghats is a region of high biodiversity and endemism, starts from Tapti river in Gujarat
and extending up to Kanyakumari at the southernmost tip of the Indian Peninsula. It has an area
of 1,64000 km
2
, covers parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu
states. Geo-informatics approach is increasingly used to monitor land use change as well as forest
fragmentation due to availability of Landsat satellite data. The Northern Western Ghats has
experienced extensive deforestation and forest fragmentation due to increased anthropogenic
pressures. The aim of this study is to analyze the changes in land cover and forest fragmentation
that occurred in 2018 in NWG region in India using Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS and GRASS GIS
software. Population density computed for NWG taluks to understand land use pattern in the study
region. Forest intactness is measured by the proportion of four spatial patterns i.e. core, perforated,
edge, interior and patches. NWG covers an area of 65, 105 sq. km and covers parts of Gujarat,
Maharashtra and Goa states. Land use map of NWG showed that agriculture is predominant land
use that covers 32.82% of the area. Forest fragmentation at the landscape level showed 59% area
under non-forest category due to increase in agriculture land and development activities.
Fragmentation map depicts that conflict occurred mainly in patch and perforated areas of NWG.
Human-wildlife conflict analysis showed that elephant and gaur are the main wild species which
are involved in crop depredation, livestock depredation and human attack, therefore initiates
conflict with indigenous people. Human-wildlife conflict linkage with fragmentation depicts that
there are few number of corridors present in NWG. The overall results indicate that anthropogenic
activities are the main causes of the loss of forest cover, forest fragmentation and human-wildlife
conflict. An increase in the area of cropland and barren land due to fragmentation contributed to
the formation of wasteland or non-forest land in this region. Determining the trend and the rate of
land cover conversion is necessary for development planners to establish a rational land use policy.

MPhil EI 2017-2018 INT Dr. Jaishankar Nair